'The Amazing Race' eliminates Jennifer and LaKisha Hoffman

The "Sisters" team of Jennifer Hoffman and LaKisha Hoffman became the eighth team eliminated from The Amazing Race 14 during last night's broadcast on CBS.


"To experience this race with [Jennifer] and see her strength really made me look at her differently," LaKisha, a 28-year-old program coordinator from Bronx, NY, said following her team's elimination.  "She's not my little sister anymore."

"It was just an amazing experience that I didn't want to share with anybody other than my sister, I enjoyed every minute of it," said Jennifer, a 24-year-old marketing assistant from Louisville, KY.

The Amazing Race's tenth episode began where the previous week's had left off -- with the "Former NFL Cheerleaders" team of Cara Rosenthal and Jaime Edmondson arriving at Beijing's Drum Tower and having The Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan surprise them with the news that they were in the middle of the super-leg and needed to continue racing. Rather than checking-in at the Race's ninth Pit Stop, Phil handed them their next clue, which told them to make their way to a local street mall.

"The one time we come in first at a Pit Stop it's not over," Jaime lamented.


The "Mother and Son" team of Margie Adams, a 51-year-old clinical research associate from Denver, CO, and Luke Adams, a 23-year-old college graduate from Denver, CO were the second team to meet Phil and learn that the leg was continuing. 

"We made up a lot and it turns out it wasn't an elimination, [that's] frustrating," Margie said.

The "Sibling Lawyers" team of Tammy Jih, a 26-year-old lawyer from San Francisco, CA, and Victor Jih, a 35-year-old lawyer from Los Angeles, CA, were the third team to arrive.  Jennifer and LaKisha were the last team to arrive but were elated when Phil revealed that the leg wasn't over yet.

"Shut the hell up!" a wide-eyed Lakisha said as she poked Jennifer in disbelief.

"You've got to be kidding me," Jennifer added.


Once the teams arrived at the street mall they received an new clue that instructed them to search the area's shops for a Travelocity gnome statue and then follow the instructions under its base.

Jaime and Cara, Margie and Luke, and Tammy and Victor all ended up searching the shops for their gnome at the same time. 

Margie and Luke were the first team to find their gnome, followed by Jaime and Cara, Tammy and Victor, and Jennifer and LaKisha.

Once the teams found their gnomes, they were instructed to take a taxi to Gu Gong Xi Bei Jiano, where they would have to board motorized bicycles and ride them past Beijing's Forbidden City and across Tianimann Square to the city's Dongdan subway station.

However Jaime and Cara and Margie and Luke both had a hard time flagging down taxis to leave the street mall, allowing Tammy and Victor to jump into first place, followed by Margie and Luke, Tammy and Victor, and Jennifer and LaKisha.


Jaime and Cara also continued to clash with their taxi drivers, with Jamie continuing her "ugly American" behavior and berating their Chinese drivers for not speaking English.

Tammy and Victor were the first time to complete the bicycle ride and arrive at the subway station, followed by Jennifer and LaKisha, Margie and Luke, and Jaime and Cara.

Once they were at the subway station the teams learned it was time for them to complete one of two Detour tasks: "Beijing Opera" or "Chinese Waiter."

"Beijing Opera" required the teams to travel to the Beijing opera house and make themselves up as two princess and gentleman characters.  Once they were fully made-up and costumed they would receive their next clue.

"Chinese Waiter" required the teams to travel to a restaurant and take the food orders of a table of Mandarin-speaking diners.  Once they'd taken all the orders, they'd have to recite them back to the restaurant's chef correctly and then serve the dishes in order to receive their next clue.


Tammy and Victor -- Chinese-Americans who had learned Mandarin as children -- were the only team to choose the "Chinese Waiter" task.

"If we can't do this task, Mom and Dad will kill us," Victor said in Mandarin as they entered the restaurant.

Although they still needed more than one attempt to get the patrons' orders right, Tammy and Victor were the first team to complete their Detour task and receive a new clue which instructed them to walk to a nearby opera house exhibit that housed the Race's second and final U-Turn stand.

Once at the U-Turn stand, only one team could decide to use the U-Turn twist on another, forcing the U-Turn'd team to have to go back and do the second Detour option they hadn't completed in order to continue racing.  Unlike the Race's first U-Turn, the second U-Turn wasn't "blind" and required the team that was exercising it to reveal their identity to the team they were U-Turning.

Jennifer and LaKisha were the first team to arrive at the opera house.  They also completing the Detour task before Margie and Luke and left for the U-Turn location in second place.


Meanwhile, Jaime and Cara fell further behind in fourth place when their cab driver took them to the location of the National Opera instead of the smaller Beijing Opera facility.

After arriving at the U-Turn location in first place, Tammy and Victor quickly decided to U-Turn Jennifer and LaKisha.

"We knew going into the leg that we would use the U-Turn and that we would use it on Jen and Kisha," Victor explained afterwards.  "And we expected that if Jen and Kisha had gotten there first they probably would have U-Turned us."

After arriving at the U-Turn location, the teams received clues that instructed them to make their way to the Dong Hua Men Xi Shi street market.

Jaime and Cara finally arrived at the Beijing opera house after Margie and Luke had already left the Detour location in third place.

Meanwhile, once they arrived at the street market, Tammy and Victor learned that it was time for one of them to complete the Race's next Roadblock task.  After reading that the task would require someone "a taste for adventure" and volunteering to complete it, Victor learned that he'd have to eat a plate of deep-fried grasshoppers, beetle larvae, scorpions, and starfish.


"That's so gross!" Victor shouted in Mandarin as the food booth's workers laughed.

"I can not believe I'm eating this," he added afterward in English.

However despite his discomfort, Victor seemed to eat the plate quickly and finished before any other teams had arrived at the street market.

After completing the Roadblock, Tammy and Victor received a clue that told them to travel to the "Eagle's Nest" Olympic Stadium, which would serve as the location of the leg's Pit Stop.

Meanwhile, Jennifer and LaKisha and Margie and Luke all struggled to find the U-Turn location, resulting in Jaime and Cara catching up and all three teams wandering the streets searching for the location at the same time.

Margie and Luke finally became the second team to find the u-Turn stand and were elated to discover that Tammy and Victor had already U-Turned Jennifer and LaKisha.


"Awesome!" Margie said.

Tammy and Victor were the first team to arrive at the Pit Stop.  As the leg's winners they received an eight-day trip to the Galapagos Islands.  Margie and Luke then followed in second place after Margie completed the Roadblock meal.

Jennifer and LaKisha.arrived at the U-Turn location in third place but discovered they had been U-Turned and would have to go back and complete the "Chinese Waiter" Detour option before continuing.

"It was absolutely ridiculous," Jennifer said afterwards.

However despite their language barrier, Jennifer and LaKisha managed to complete the other Detour task and arrive at the street market Roadblock location before Jaime and Cara, who continued to bad-mouth China until they finally became the last team to find the U-Turn stand.

Jaime and Cara arrived at the Roadblock location well after Jennifer had already started eating her plate, however they were able to close significantly when Cara managed to down her plate quickly while Jennifer struggled.


Jennifer and LaKisha still left the Roadblock task in third place, however Jennifer began needing to stop to pee due to all the water she had drank while eating her plate.  Although they arrived at the Olympic stadium ahead of Jaime and Cara, they then fell into last place when LaKisha offered to let her sister stop at a portable toilet, resulting in the sisters becoming the last team to arrive at the Pit Stop.

"You had to stop at a bathroom... [and] it came down to seconds," Phil told Jennifer as she began to cry and LsKisha consoled her.

"I feel guilty as hell, I had to use the bathroom," Jennifer told Phil.  "If it came down to 10 seconds or however many seconds it came down to then that's on me," Jennifer told Phil, causing her sister to say that she wasn't blaming her for their loss.

"I'm not going to hold that against her... I'm not going to say she lost it for us [because] she's a big part of why we even got this far," LaKisha said.

The Amazing Race 14's next --and final -- episode will air Sunday, May 10 at 8PM ET/PT on CBS.






About The Author: Steven Rogers